


Catching Keys

by lousy_science



Series: The Mutineers [3]
Category: Marvel, Wolverine and the X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Cybercrimes, M/M, Private Investigators, Surveillance, Terrorism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-28
Updated: 2019-08-04
Packaged: 2020-07-24 18:42:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20019226
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lousy_science/pseuds/lousy_science
Summary: When the founders of a cryptocurrency start getting death threats on the eve of a big conference, they call in Logan to provide security. Logan calls in Scott to provide stability. No one gets quite what they expect.Follows on fromThe Last Time We FoughtandCan't Tell the Salt from the Wound.





	1. Chapter 1

Convention centers had, to Logan’s mind, all the architectural charm of Soviet gulags combined with the ambience of bomb shelters. No matter how much money had been thrown at them for Dale Chihuly sculptures and water features to increase the feng shui - both of which the Harpenden Events Hub boasted of in their introductory pack for attendees - there was something that beat down the spirit about all those meeting rooms and reception areas. 

He was re-reading the introductory pack to prep for the week’s job. For the next two days he was checked into a room in the official Clearwater Events Hub accommodation facility. It was a Hilton that connected to the Hub via a covered overbridge. Looked like a prison walkway to Logan, or maybe an umbilical cord stretched between two codependent entities.

Scott had pointed to it when they were reviewing the layout the day before. “Looks like this is the quickest way on foot to connect to the freeway going north-east.”

“You’d need to be parked in the Hilton’s lot. Only registered vehicles. Need ID and a room booking.”

“Employee lot?”

“They park underground. But mostly they’re bussed in.”

Nodding, chewing on his bottom lip, Scott’s finger traced back over the overbridge to the convention center on the other side of the freeway. “Quickest getaway from the center, then. Limits the routes, unless you want to get stuck in spaghetti junction on the way to suburbia, but more exit points.”

“And there’s the Trader Joe’s plus that huge Korean BBQ place with more parking options. Some possible grey spots for surveillance.”

“What’s the name of this thing again?”

Scott knew. He just liked making Logan say it out loud. “Ogre Coin Presents OgreCon 1.0.”

“Ogre? Like Shrek?”

“Just,” Logan sighed, rubbing a palm over his face, “like fucking Shrek.”

Scott grinned and sat back in his chair. “Sounds like a kid’s birthday theme.”

“If you don’t want to come on this job, I can do it myself.”

“Oh, I can come. I just need to be thoroughly briefed beforehand.”

They were at Guillermo’s Bar, making up a whole third of the current patrons. Jeff was serving, though with the other four customers being the kind of old guys who would nurse their brews over a long spell, he wasn’t in danger of being rushed off his feet. Logan had told him several times that he could relax, bring in a book, or watch a game on the TV, but Jeff always said that he was practicing “standing meditation”. 

It was highly probable that Scott and Logan were the only two people in the bar who were interested in the ins and outs of cryptocurrency. One of the reasons that Logan had bought Guillermo’s was because it was one outpost in Silicon Valley that was firmly analogue, a place not interested in optimising itself or disrupting anything but your sobriety. 

“Here’s your briefing, numbnuts. There’s a conference pack all attendees get, I’ll forward it to you, along with Ernie’s requirements for this job.”

“Wait, who’s Ernie? You suck at briefing, by the way.”

Logan raised a middle finger with one hand as he pulled out a phone with the other. Scrolling through to find the right tab, he held up a webpage on Ogre Coin’s co-founder Ernie Mott. 

“Ernie and his pal Sharif have been doing crypto for seven years, which makes them elder statesmen of this shit, or so they make out. They founded Ogre Coin two years back, and yes, it’s named for Shrek, and it’s because they invest in green energy companies.”

“And Shrek is green?” Scott’s smile faltered. “ _That’s_ the connection? That is…”

“Nerd shit. Anyway, Ogre Coin isn’t content just to save the planet, they are also a community. Big sign over their reception when you go in - COMMUNITY with the ‘unity’ part spelt out in neon green lights.” Logan cracked his knuckles and leant back in his chair. 

“Are neon lights eco friendly?”

“Who knows. Bitcoin mining is sure as shit not eco friendly, which is why last year Ogre bought a start-up that is working to make the process less energy-dependent. You know how you make your bitcoin?”

“My bitcoin? I don’t even have Apple Pay set up yet.”

“These currencies are managed through incredibly long numbers as tokens - like barcodes, but eight zillion digits in them. You can either buy bitcoin using another currency, or you can mine it. The mining is basically solving puzzles, by solving the puzzles you are adding to the blockchain. No pickaxes, no hard labor.”

“What about the helmet with the light on the front?”

“Wear one to the convention, you’ll feel right at home.” 

Guillermo’s was kept dark inside, as God intended bars to be, but as Logan emerged from the tunnel into the Harpenden Events Hub ‘restoration space’ he had to blink against the overpowering glare. The pristine marble bar that ran the length of the room was empty save for the white cloth a single barman was diligently rubbing a corner with. Scattered around the long rectangular hall were pod-shaped tables with poky little stools that looked more like kindergarten furniture than something an adult human could sit on.

Behind the bar was a huge aquarium. Logan watched butterflyfishes skitter around seaweed before being transformed into zebras running through long grass. Then they melted into tiny multi-colored balls exploding over a surface that looked like a dog muzzle. 

“Does the screen give people headaches?” Logan asked the bartender as he reached the bar.

The guy barely looked up. “The alcohol gives people headaches.”

“This is the main social area for the convention?”

“Mmm-hmm, but no one’s arriving for around an hour. We also have another bar on the roof, but that’s more of a nightclub scene. It won’t open until after 9, when the DJ starts. You know who they booked?”

Logan shook his head. The bartender said some name that Logan had never heard of and didn’t intend to remember. Then he pointed to the west corner of the building. “There’s a mini-bar in our Alpha conference hall, but we’re under instruction not to open it for this event.”

Alpha was were all the key talks were, including the event that had given the con its name and Logan’s primary reason for being there. “Your head of security is Vince Carling, where do I find him?”

“Head down the hall, through the second door on the left. You’ll see the Security sign.”

Vince was an older guy, Logan figured probably ex-cop, with a slow bullrider’s walk and sharp blue eyes. He had known Logan was coming, shook his hand with an iron grip then took him on a walk around the convention space. The perky barista in reception was clearly a Vince fan as she waved him over to give them free coffees as they discussed the event.

Considering the biodegradable bamboo cup his coffee had come in, Vince said, “It’s good that these are recyclable, but I heard bitcoins aren’t exactly ecologically PC.”

Logan nodded. “Creating one is the equivalent of flying a jumbo jet to pick up the newspaper every morning. They suck up electricity like nobody’s business.”

“Somebody’s business.” Vince nodded at the space around them, where various staffers in polo shirts were setting up stalls and hanging banners saying stuff like _Wealth Actualisation Workshops_ and _Bitcoin Traveller Tours: Tanzania 2020_. “Shall we compare notes? ‘Cause to be honest, the guys that hired you didn’t tell me much, and you can probably guess I don’t spend a lot of time online. Unless you count eBay. I get my car parts on eBay.”

“There are two guys behind Ogre Coin, who are running all this. This year they wanted to get a greener element to their business and bought controlling shares in a start-up called Aloe. One of the big reasons they’re having this convention is to show it off to potential investors. But then a Twitter rumor kicked off a few months back that the algorithm behind Aloe was created by Hans Guttemann. And that Guttemann may make an appearance at this conference.”

“This Guttemann’s not a good man?”

“If you’d been investing in cryptocurrency over the last couple of years, you’d want Guttemann’s head on a stick. He ran one of the most popular, it was called Charlemagne, had around $300 million invested. And then he disappeared.”

“What, in a puff of smoke? Or was he ‘disappeared’ by his investors?”

“No one even knows if Guttemann existed in the first place, or if he was just a phantom. But his board of directors had to issue a public statement that the head of Charlemagne had vanished, and he’d taken all the passwords with him.” 

“These passwords, they’re like the money?”

Logan grimaced and nodded. “For the purposes of this discussion, yes.”

“What a world. And now I’m hiring extra guys in to run metal detectors at every entrance.”

“Ogre Coin has had threats. That’s why I’m here, to help neutralise them.”

Vince asked him the same thing Logan asked Ernie when he’d gotten the job. “Do you think Guttemann’s gonna turn up?”

“I have no idea. I don’t know if it matters if he does, if he stays anonymous. What little we know about him, we know he spent a lot of energy hiding from other people. Showing up here would undo all that. And he’d get his ass kicked. But my main concern is stopping anyone from getting revenge on Guttemann by hurting other people here.”

“A lot of hurt? Bullets, bombs?”

“You think they can get guns in through your team?”

Scanning the convention hall, Vince kept his voice down. “We’re thorough, but there’s always a way. I’ve had my people sweep the grounds twice. Nothing’s come up yet.”

“Then let’s keep it like that. I’ll give you my number, anything even slightly hinky comes up, let me know.”

Vince lifted his eyebrows and pulled out his phone. “You want me to call you ahead of Ernie Mott?”

Logan still wasn’t sure that Ernie didn’t have a hand in setting up some of this trouble. He replied, “Call me. Let’s not trouble the boss unnecessarily.”

Yesterday in the bar Scott had asked him about Aloe. “They’re the source of all this. What’s their deal?”

Flipping the conference brochure open, Logan drummed an index finger over Aloe’s obnoxious brand logo, stylised to look like a plant growing into a circuit board. Scott rolled his eyes obligingly. 

“Run by a guy named Markus. They claim to have a service where they can mine coins with minimal energy output. Ernie says he’s yet to see it work, but that doesn’t seem to worry him all that much.”

Scott snorted. “The tech doesn’t need to work to get VC money, it just needs to sound good enough…”

“...to attract VC money, exactly, congratulations Summers, you’ve managed to understand the current Silicon Valley business model now that it’s been leading the country’s economy for twenty years.”

“Do you think Markus started the rumor about Gutteman?”

“I’ve not met him. Ernie doesn’t think so, says Markus is freaked out by all the publicity.”

“And yet not freaked out by all the money. He’s getting a big chunk of Ogre Coin for technology that may not work? Here I am, a poor student, forced to work part-time for some private dick.”

Logan considered bringing up Scott’s not-inconsiderable annuity from the Xavier Foundation, but didn’t. Instead he said, “At least you didn’t invest in Charlemagne. An even quicker way to go broke than student loans.”

“That’s the most interesting part of all this. Guttemann, or if there even is a Guttemann. What does Ernie say?”

“He thought the rumor was good publicity for the con, at first. I wondered if he was the one who started it. He swears he didn’t. I got called in when he found out his staff were getting bomb threats. The primary role of the mission,” Logan still called them missions, and he paused after saying it, watching Scott’s eyebrow arch at the word, then kept going, “is to keep an eye out for any trouble on the ground. Any dissatisfied investors, or trolls, or terrorists, trying to find Guttemann and hijack the event - especially the big mining duel.”

“Wait - terrorists?”

“Crypto is preferred by terrorist groups. Used for fundraising, buying weapons, paying off bribes.”

“What’s the duel?”

Logan flicked through to the relevant pages in the conference pack. It was billed like a prize fight, with some terrible photoshop. “A bunch of mining rigs are going to go head-to-head in a battle. It includes Aloe, showing off their tech for the first time.”

“Like Robot Wars? That’s gonna bring the crowds in. And if Guttemann shows up for that?”

“Get him into safety, disperse any tension on the ground, and bring him to Ernie and Sharif. Like you, they have questions.”

“Both Charlemagne investors?” 

“Yes, but they’re not that sore about the money they lost. Nah, they admire the long con Gutteman pulled off. They wanna know how he did it.”

Logan’s bottle was empty. He gestured at Jeff behind the bar, who broke out of his trance to come over to the table with two fresh beers. Scott declined his - “I’m driving, remember?” - and scooped up the papers to organise them into a tidy stack. 

“I suppose if I ask you for the plan, you’ll say...”

Rolling a beer cap between his fingers, Logan smiled at him. “‘Plans are on a need-to-know basis.’”

Scott sighed and pursed his lips fussily. He made a show of pushing his chair back to make his way to the bathroom. 

Logan listened to him walk off, ears open for the sound of the door closing, the one hand drier creaking into life as soon as anyone walked within three feet of it, the running of water. No one else in the bar looked like they were moving any time soon. Jeff was back in his spot behind the taps, staring into the middle distance. Logan didn’t know if he guessed that his boss was about to go into the gents to blow Scott, but he did know that Jeff would be standing in the same position by the time they came out of there. 

Logan had pushed his own chair back. It was time to boost the team’s morale. 

In the hotel room, Logan plugged his two phones in to charge. Scott was coming in with the rest of the conference attendees on a standard pass. He’d been appalled to learn that a day ticket would cost the regular attendees $450, even with a free tote bag included. 

There were three tiers of tickets to the con, with the top tier $1800. It included a meeting with the Ogre Coin board of investors, who Logan had just met for free. He’d wanted to review their VIP ticket lists in person. Despite Logan’s requests, several all-access ticket passes had already been given away. All he wanted the names of everyone who’d gotten one, a reasonable request in his mind, but to the room full of twitchy crypto enthusiasts it was “surveillance state stuff.”

The guy who’d said that was part of Aloe’s team, and he’d looked over to Markus, his boss, for confirmation. Markus hadn’t obliged. Instead he’d sighed, pinched his nose, and said, “Just give him the fucking names. All of you, do it. Do you know how bad the optics of an attempted assassination would be?”

Logan got the list. Markus had lingered, staying in the room with him until after everyone had left. Waiting, Logan began his two-fingered typing of each name he’d been given into his laptop. He had a contractor in Fremont who’d run them for him over the next hour. Markus was fidgeting, tapping at his phone, then he came and sat down next to him. 

“Look, I’m sorry about them all. It’s a paranoid industry.”

Logan didn’t look up. “Clearly.”

“I don’t think anyone on that list will help you, but I understand why you need to have it.”

Leaning back in the uncomfortable conference room chair, Logan turned to him. “Where do you think the Guttemann rumors came from?”

“You’re asking if it was me.” 

Logan shrugged. “Was it?” 

“My fiancée is coming to this event. The last thing I would do is jeopardize it’s safety - _her_ safety.”

“She’s who you were on the phone with just now?”

The air seemed to come out of Markus. “She’s insisting on attending. Her code is in Aloe, and she wants to be here for the mining duel. Our technology is revolutionary and will -”

Logan waved the speech off. “Save it for the con. Did Hans Guttemann have anything to do with Aloe?”

Markus swallowed. “No. At least. Probably not. Not as far as I am aware.” 

“It’s your product and you don’t know what’s in it?”

“Look, we built it around several APIs. And there is code in there I barely understand. The area my fiancée works on, entropy case changes, it’s extremely specialised. It’s also Guttemann’s area of speciality. The reason Aloe works is that we’ve combined several obscure and under-utilised areas of mechanisation and software. So it’s possible that a remnant of Guttemann’s code could be in there. But then it’s just possible that something he worked on was once used to build a new feature in Facebook. Does that implicate everyone who’s ever had an account?”

Not willing to debate moral relativism with a strung-out tech entrepreneur, Logan picked up the list of names. “Do you think anyone on your team would have come up with the rumor?”

Leaning forward on the table, Markus’s shoulders curled forward. His voice came out thin and scared. “From the team of people you just met? Yes. Every single one of them. Including Ernie and Sharif. It’s just that kind of business.”

Scott met Logan in the main hall at lunchtime. OgreCon had officially kicked off ninety minutes ago and it was crowded and loud, with attendees leaving the first sessions to find food or to try and hustle in the time before the mining duel. For the really busy, there were free sample bottles of Soylent being handed out by a woman with a pained smile on her face. 

Pointing at her, Scott said, “I think I know her. Working on her Masters in Education.”

“You want to go say hi? Get a freebie?”

“She’s in enough misery. And that stuff tastes like cardboard. Makes me miss MREs.”

They found a corner away from the incessant chatter and leaflet-handouts. Logan had managed to buy a non-vegan hotdog and he took a bite as Scott told him what he’d learned. 

“The buzz about Aloe is huge. I’d say the Guttemann stuff is of interest, but the core attendees don’t take those rumors very seriously. But I heard a couple of guys discuss the possibility that Aloe’s tech could change to whole crypto landscape.”

“Wait, how?”

“I mean, I’ve mostly just read the Wikipedia page on this stuff and I couldn’t follow it all, but the gist was that if Aloe measure up to expectations it’ll be able to process a, quote, ‘scary-ass amount’ of cryptographic chains. Which means that people with access to it will be able to mine more effectively than anyone else, eliminating a lot of smaller investors, creating more centralised wealth. You get how that would upset people.” 

“Yeah, the whole point of crypto is to decentralise money systems.”

“But if you decentralise, you give up security. People are willing to make that trade-off now, however if Aloe takes that advantage away from them…”

Logan polished off the hot dog and wiped his hands on his jeans. “We don’t even know if it’ll work yet.”

“This demo is going to be interesting. Do you know how the duel will go down?”

Pulling his phone out of his pocket, Logan started saying, “Ernie’s been cagey about it - wait, it’s Vince.”

Swiping the call function on, he held the phone to his ear. “Logan. We’ve got a situation here. Down in the basement, room C3, east side -”

“I know where. Coming.”

Pointing to the crowd lining up for the mining duel event, he nodded at Scott, who understood and made a beeline for it as Logan pushed past people to get to the service elevator. 

Room C3 was where Vince’s team had set up a station for scanning con footage uploaded to social sites. It was something that Logan had insisted on, despite the convention center security team claiming their own CCTV system was “world class”. From the outside it looked just like another janitor’s closet, but when Logan burst through the doors he found Vince and two other staff members standing in front of a half dozen screens showing YouTube, Instagram, and other social channels. Each screen showed some sliver of the conference, whether it was panel discussions, group selfie shots, or some vlogger live streaming his breakfast taco by the concession stands. 

But no one in the room was looking at them. 

They were staring at an object placed awkwardly on the desk. It was grey and white, looking like a toy phone some bored kid had put in the microwave.

Logan understood what it was immediately. “3D printed gun.”

Vince nodded. “Found it on a guy that Stu here spotted - using that program you recommended.”

The program was an algorithm that an acquaintance of Logan’s had shared with him early on in his time in Palo Alto. It simply matched up the social media accounts of known associates of a suspect list and highlighted when they broadcast something live. Out of the threats that had bombarded Ogre Coin since the Guttemann rumors hit, there had been around a dozen that Logan identified as high-risk. 

Stu was explaining, his arms crossed, as if he was afraid of accidentally touching the cartoon-looking weapon on the desk. “It was in someone else’s feed. I saw this guy in the background, and it was like you said to watch out for - he had a laptop bag that he carried as if it was much lighter than a laptop would be, especially the huge machines these fellows generally have.”

Miming someone lifting a light bag, Stu pointed at the screens showing the entrance hall. “He also approached from the left door, and tried to avoid the cameras. Had his hood up. Hand over his face. Just like you said they might try.”

“Stu brought it to my attention, and we tried to get a match on his attendee pass. He’d booked in under the name Jonny Ive. Even I know that Jonny Ive isn’t some tow-haired kid in an anarchist hoodie.” Vince shook his head. 

“Where is he now?”

Vince pointed a thumb over his shoulder. “Holding pen in C5. Said he had a right to an attorney present. I reminded him that he was in my house, and I had all the rights, and he wasn’t going anywhere quick. Looked like he was gonna piss his pants.”

“Can I?”

“‘Course. Mind if I come with?”

Logan nodded and followed Vince as he opened up the intervening doors with a thumbprint ID. There were two steel-reinforced entrances to pass through to get to C5, and before they went in they could see the interior using the one-way mirror. One of Vince’s staff was observing on the outside. “He’s not done anything. Since we took his phone off him he’s looked lost.”

“Where’s the phone?”

Vince pulled it from his jacket pocket. “It’s got a password on it. You know how to get through?”

“Not at all. But the cops will.”

Behind the glass, the kid who’d walked into the convention with a homemade gun and a grimy sweatshirt declaring ANARKY 4 ALL OR NOTHING AT ALL was hunched over the edge of the table. 

Taking the SIM card out of the phone, Logan put the phone in one pocket and the SIM in another before walking into the room. The kid looked up. He looked even younger this side of the glass. 

Logan didn’t sit down. “Who are you?”

Raising his head an inch, the kid looked at him with bloodshot eyes. They were straining to focus, rimmed with tears. A tweaker, probably, or on something Logan was too old to recognise. Coming down back into reality. Logan waited. 

Kid said nothing, lowered his head again. 

“You got a chance - a fucking tiny chance - of making this slightly better for you if you tell us right now who you are and who your friends are.”

The head turned to the side. Logan could hear his labored breathing. 

“Is there anyone else up there we should know about? Because we’ll find out one way or another, and if you tell us, we can say you co-operated. That’s a word prosecutors like, co-operation.”

“There’s not shit.” The kid cut his words off with a sob, throwing his head back to stare at the grimy ceiling. “There’s not shit you can do for me. They said they’d pay me.”

“Who?”

“Some guys. Online. They Venmo’d me $900. Said I was doing work for the revolution.”

Logan pulled out the chair opposite the kid. “What revolution?”

“Look, I needed some stuff. I thought - I wasn’t going to do anything. As long as I got in, streamed some video to show I was here, I’d be able to tell them I tried. Not like I was really gonna do anything. I never even heard of this guys before.”

He was shaking now. Whether it was the weight of realised consequences, or withdrawal, or both, Logan couldn’t tell. 

Outside the room he turned to Vince. “You called the cops yet?”

“Was waiting to see what you’d get out of him.”

He’d tried to find out some more out, but the kid had just clutched his own sides and rocked back and forth. Logan glanced at him through the window. “Get him some sugar and something to drink. Was the gun loaded?”

“No. No bullets in the kid’s bag that we could find. Should I call the cops now?”

Before that happened, Logan wanted to go through the bag himself, but his phone went off. He glanced at it. Ernie Mott. 

“‘Scuse me.”

Out in the hallway, he told Ernie what they’d found. Ernie kept saying _Goddamn_ over and over. “I have a 3D printer at home, goddamn. You hear things but… So the security guy is gonna call the police?”

“Yeah.” Logan ran a hand over his face. “I think it’s all we can do. Nothing to get out of him. Vince knows the local force, they will keep it discreet.”

“Good. Wow. And there’s not been anything else?”

Trying not to sound too exasperated, Logan replied, “Nothin’ on any of the video feeds. No claims that anyone’s spotted Guttemann.”

“Well, how could they? No one knows what he looks like.”

“So you keep telling me.”

“I really appreciate this, Logan. You’ve helped so much. Don’t miss the duel - we have something really special planned.”

Ernie shut the phone off before Logan could throw it against the wall. 

Back in Room C3, Logan leaned against the wall and scanned over the different feeds. It was mainly shots of the stage being set up for the mining duel, which was between Aloe and some company called InfiniteGainz Mining. 

In Logan’s hotel room was a device that could read most SIM cards and copy them. He wanted to get a version of the one belong to the would-be shooter before the cops came, and he’d asked Vince to hold the kid until the duel was over. Vince said he knew some guys on the local force, they’d come in the underground entrance and keep the sirens off. 

Across several cameras, Ernie Mott appeared on the dias. Alpha conference hall was clearly packed. 

“Guys! Thank you for coming! Is this place lit, or what?”

Ernie was beaming, slapping the sides of the dias, looking awfully full of beans for someone whose private security contractor had told him a potential hitman had been detained minutes before entering the same room as him. Maybe it was the adrenaline rush. Ernie was hyped, even more motor-mouthed than Logan had seen him before. 

“And all of our followers know we’ve been teasing a very special challenge for this duel! One so special, there’s even been some stories that we had lured Hans Guttemann here!”

The sound in the conference room was a mixture of cheers, boos, and nervous laughter. Behind him Logan could make out Ernie’s co-founder Sharif looking uncomfortable. 

“But if Hans is here, he’s not registered on the OgreCon app, which if you haven't downloaded it yet, well goddamn it guys, get out your phone and do it right now - you’ll get a free drink tonight at the after party and be in to win a consultancy meeting with me and the board!”

Maybe this is all the job would be. Making Ernie feel safe enough to make his bad jokes up on stage. Getting one more addict thrown into the system all because they made a desperate choice. A front row seat to this century’s gold rush. The mini bar in the hotel room after the con ended. Scott’s hair between his fingers. 

Up on stage, Ernie held up a battered-looking hard drive. “We got our hands on some of Charlemagne’s lost data. This drive contains a wallet, which no one has been able to recover. Until today. This is the time to see the greatest mining tech on the planet at work.”

Maybe it wouldn’t be.

“What the fuck.” Logan pulled out his phone to call Sharif, knowing Ernie wouldn’t deign to answer. Sharif took the call after the two rings. “Sharif, what the _fuck._ ”

Sharif sounded tired. “I told him it was a bad idea.”

“Where did you even get that?”

“Wait, let me get off stage.”

Logan could hear the noises of the crowd in the background. Ernie’s voice was still booming. In front of him the screens showing streaming content figures multiplied, as every influencer tried to capture an exclusive of the possible return of the missing Charlemagne investment funds. 

Sharif got back on the call. Logan could see on one of the CCTV shots that he was in the side room behind Alpha. His voice was low. “We don’t even know if it’s a genuine Charlemagne wallet, or garbage. That drive has been all over Eastern Europe as we tried to track it down, and we weren’t the only ones.”

“But if it does contain the passcodes to the missing funds - ”

“If it does, we have to reimburse people what they lost. We’re big heroes. If it doesn’t, we’re the guys who get all the clicks from the media coverage of what wacky bitcoin news broke today. It’s win-win.” 

“Horseshit. You shoulda told me.”

Sharif sounded resigned. “We weren’t even going to do it. But Ernie said you got the guy and that it’d be safe.”

“We got one guy. Could be others.”

“Look, I gotta get back there.”

Logan hung up as Vince burst into the room, his phone in one hand. “Logan, just got a call. It’s bad. In car park. The cops were coming in, unmarked car, and as they drove down the ramp the lights went - then they hit spikes.”

“Do you use spike strips?”

Vince shook his head, holding the door open. “Nope. Someone’s idea of an ambush.”

“Fuck. Let’s go.”

For an older guy, Vince could move quickly. The two of them took the stairs down to the car pack two at a time. At the bottom was a yellow swing door. Through the window in one of them Logan could make out some light, so the power cut wasn’t total. 

Through the door Logan looked across bays full of cars. Vince pointed the way, and they saw two uniforms standing next to a black car that was marooned at the bottom of a ramp. Both of them had their hands on their holsters. As Vince called out they looked up. 

“Officers! Both of you OK?”

“We’re fine. What’s the perimeter like?”

Logan and Vince had run over to them, and Logan nodded at the cops while taking in the ruined car wheels. The spike strip hadn’t been secured to the ground and was dragged by the car behind it. Getting any other vehicle in or out was going to be a nightmare.

“The other entrance has my man on it, I’ll get him on the radio now.” Vince fished his radio from a back pocket. “You read?”

The radio came back instantly. “Boss, it’s secure here. No evidence of tampering.”

“Close it off. No one in or out.”

Logan asked the cop nearest him, “How long were the lights out for?”

“Less than ten seconds, it felt like. I heard the spikes being slid out but didn’t see anything by the time they went back on. Drove down there like the rushing rapids ride in Disney.”

The other copped chimed in. “Yeah, it was fuckin’ nuts. You could feel the tyres go and we’re just rolling like, are we gonna hit someone? But there was nothing else here.”

In his jeans, Logan’s phone began buzzing. One short, two long. That meant it was Scott. 

“Give me a sec,” Logan picked up and barked into the phone, “Can I call you back?”

“No.” Scott’s voice was fuzzy in the din of Alpha conference hall. “FaceTime me right now.”

“What?”

The call ended, and he got a FaceTime request through. Thumbing through, he held it in front of him as Scott’s mouth filled the screen. “Logan, you gotta get up here.”

“There’s a situation I need to secure.”

“No. I know where he is. Right now.”

“Wait - Guttemann? Here?”

Scott held his phone back so that Logan could see his whole face, forehead creased in concern, eyes narrow. “Yes. On the stage.”

“How - ?”

Logan’s question trailed off as Scott turned his phone to show the presentation of Aloe’s mining rig, which was being introduced by Markus and his fiancée, who Logan had down in his records as Rebecca Schwatzkopf. 

But the woman on stage hadn’t been called Rebecca Schwatzkopf the last time Logan and Scott had seen her. That had been seven years ago in the Ukraine, and three people had almost died as a result of their encounter. She had at least ten outstanding warrants for her arrest in five different countries, was directly connected to some of the CIA’s most wanted, and her name was Raven Darkhölme. 

Logan turned and ran for the stairs. 


	2. Chapter 2

As he ran, he held his phone, which Scott still had on. Scott was moving to get closer to the stage where Raven was standing, right where Ernie was holding the Charlemagne hard drive. 

Markus was talking about Aloe’s technology ahead of the duel, “...dream to deliver a promise of eco-friendly mining, efficient, and truly smart. We critically need… alternatives to fossil fuels… new paradigms…”

One set of stairs left, and Logan mapped out the best route in his head. Outside the Alpha hall would be packed, so if he went to the north-east corner he could take the staff corridor to the backstage area. That was what he and Scott had planned earlier when discussing similar scenarios. But before he’d seen Raven’s face he’d not seriously considered how much damage a bomb could do to the crowd.

Raven knew plenty of bomb makers. She’d been tied to an attempted attack that Scott’s team had intercepted in Kuala Lumpur. It had been intended to shake down some money from a corrupt city official who fled before the bomb was discovered in a shopping mall. It had already been disarmed by the time Scott found it, but to Logan it was always about to go off.

Scott was close to the stage, in the front row, and Markus’ voice was clear over the phone introducing “my colleague, the head of our R&D department, and I’m proud to say my future wife, Dr. Rebecca Schwarzkopf.”

Logan was in the staff-only corridor when all the lights cut out. He kept running, trying to avoid the confused employees who were crashing into each other. Turning on the flashlight on his phone he could see that the Alpha hall had gone dark, too, although the glow of hundreds of devices made the figures of panicking people visible. 

The the internet connection died. From the door connecting the hall to the corridor, a stream of people began rushing through. One person shouted “Fire! Get outside!” and the crowd began to scramble. 

“Exit on your left!” Logan shouted, directing bodies to the green exit sign a few yards from the doorway. “It goes outside. Just head towards it.”

A woman stumbled, and fell into his arms. Logan steadied her, and she clung to his shirt. “Is there really a fire?”

“I don’t know, but get outside. Stay calm. When you panic you don’t breathe as well.”

She nodded and gulped air, and he twisted to propel her in the direction of the exit sign. _When you panic you don’t breathe as well_. That was such a freakin’ Scott thing to say. 

Someone had wedged the exit door open, and Logan funnelled the crowd towards it. The alarm system hadn’t gone off, and neither had the sprinklers, but people kept talking about fire - “I saw something burning in the dark” “You could smell smoke in the back” “I saw the fire alert on Twitter before the wifi went out” - and Logan had grabbed a fire extinguisher before heading into Alpha hall. 

He was two strides in when the lights came on. Nothing seemed to be on fire. There were chairs everywhere, and most of the standing banners in bright OgreCon green had toppled over. The stage was deserted except for Ernie Mott, lying flat on his back with Scott crouched over him.

“Is he - ”

Scott looked up, holding Ernie’s hand up to his chest. “He’s breathing. Just stunned, I think, maybe some cracked ribs.”

Ernie’s face scrunched up, and he said something to Scott, who bent back down over him. “It’ll be OK. We’ll get an ambulance in here. And a cleaning crew.”

From his position on his back, Ernie huffed. “Don’t make me laugh. We’re not getting our deposit back, are we?”

Logan could hear sirens in the distance. On the stage tables, the two mining set-ups were disconnected. Cords were strewn across the floor, looking recently yanked out of their sockets. The Charlemagne hard drive was nowhere to be seen. 

Six hours later, and a very shaken bunch of technology investors had regrouped in Ernie’s hotel room. Ernie wasn’t there in person, dialling in from the hospital room where he was staying for observation in case of a possible concussion. He’d been pushed over hard as soon as the lights cut out, and when the running from the stage began a few people had stood on him. For all that, he was sounding close to normal on the line. 

“Apart from that lady with the twisted ankle, no one else was hurt. It’s a minor miracle. You guys did a great job.”

Logan ground his teeth. He was slumped behind the table the phone’s loudspeaker was placed on. Scott stood next to him, waiting for Ernie to stop talking so he could read out updates from his phone. “The police took two suspects into custody for tampering with the power, but it looks like the wifi attack was done remotely. It’ll take longer to trace.”

At the other end of the table, Sharif leaned forward, “And the head of security?”

Logan barked out, “Vince. He’s gone. No leads on an escape vehicle as all the cameras recording license plates were cut. The car he drove to work was left behind. Police are going to look it over, but it looked wiped-down to me. Same with his office - desk drawers emptied, computer dead, I’d bet hard cash there’s nothing on there.”

Scott asked, “How long had Vince been working there?”

Logan stared at the desk top. “Six months. They were playing a long game.”

From the phone, Ernie spluttered. “We only booked the place three months ago.”

“Who chose it?” Scott directed the question across the table. People’s eyes drifted reluctantly to Markus. 

Markus looked broken. His head was buried in his hands, his neck bent so far that his face was barely visible. After a long pause, he talked in a whisper. “Reb- _she_ did. She said the logistics of the event center were ideal.”

“Why didn’t we - ” Ernie cut himself off. “I mean. What can you guys tell us? Logan, you said you’d encountered her before?”

Logan turned to look at Scott. If one of them had to break it to a man whose intended wife had crashed a huge event, destroyed his company’s reputation, and had stolen a mysterious hard drive, was also probably the coder known as Hans Gutteman, it was going to be Scott.

Scott cleared his throat. “Raven Darkhölme is an international terror suspect. She’s been operating for a very long time, never with any particular ideological goal, although she always had a propensity towards bringing down the establishment, in any form. 

She was linked to cyber attacks seven or eight years ago, but not with any real evidence. We didn’t know much about it back then, I’m afraid to say. From my limited exposure to her I can confidently say I believe she could have been Hans Guttemann. An operation of that scale would be within her powers.”

Logan picked up the thread. “If we assume for now she was Guttemann, then the hard drive you had on stage must’ve been worth something to her.”

Mentioning the hard drive drew mutterings around the table. On the phone, Ernie sounded unsure. “I genuinely didn’t think there was anything on it. We got it from a connection in Belarus, he’d been looking for a Charlemagne wallet master key everywhere, and this was just one dead end he’d found.”

Scott said, “Maybe it wasn’t a wallet. Maybe there was something else on there that could’ve revealed her identity. We know she worked in Eastern Europe a lot.”

“No.”

It came from Markus. His head stayed in the grip of his hands, but it was shaking from side to side. “No. She - _Rebecca_ \- she wasn’t in Eastern Europe. She’d never been. We had talked about going to Prague on our honeymoon.”

He lifted his head. His eyes were bloodshot. “Rebecca had a PhD in computer science. She was twenty-eight years old. It’s not possible that eight years ago she was conducting cyber attacks for terrorists, she would have been in school. This is some sort of misunderstanding.”

Scott kept his voice soft. “I’m sorry, sir, I know it’s been a long day, and this must be distressing to hear. But despite her appearance, Raven Darkhölme is in her late thirties, at least. She has been operating large-scale heists, cyberattacks, blackmail, and other threatening behavior for at least fifteen years, based on the CIA’s intel.”

Markus began to sob. The man sitting next to him placed a hand on his arm and slid over some crumpled paper napkins. 

Ernie broke back in. “Will we have to talk to the CIA?”

Logan was happy to answer this one. “Yes. And the police. That kid we found with the gun is in custody.”

Sharif sighed. “How do we deal with all this? Plus there’ll be lawsuits, and the rest.” He looked at Scott. “Will you help us?”

“Of course. We offer a full-service package for managing these situations.”

“Excellent,” Ernie was sounding cheerful again, “that’s excellent. Logan, you’ll put together something for me to review? Time is of the essence, so let’s regroup tomorrow morning. By the way, did everyone see our trading price increase?”

Sharif covered his face with his hands. The rest of the room looked over at Markus, who was still shaking. 

Logan decided to end the call. Jabbing at the speaker button with his finger, he cut Ernie off. Without looking at the rest of the room he stood and walked out. Scott could handle the fallout. 

Through the hotel windows the sky over the conference center was dark. The building had its lights on, but there was still police tape visible near the main entrance. Logan looked over it while he ran the SIM card he’d confiscated earlier that day through the reader attached to his laptop. His preferred infosec contractor, Charlotte, a neon-haired freelancer who kept vampire hours, had set him up with it. It was designed for what she called the “Mickey Mouse jobs” where he didn’t need a full forensic analysis. She’d probably end up looking over the phone’s memory eventually, but he knew if he kept it from the police for more than 24 hours they would get hinky. 

Hs laptop made a beeping sound to indicate it was done. Logan took a quick look at what it had managed to grab, and it seemed like the bulk of the SIM’s content had been scraped. Picking up the room’s phone, he called reception to get a courier for immediate pick up, and slid the SIM back into the cheap Android phone. A few minutes later there was a knock on the door, and he handed the attendant a padded envelope with the phone inside and the police department’s address scrawled on the outside. “I want a registered signature for this.”

“Of course, sir.”

The kid in the hotel uniform looked about twelve. Logan tipped her a twenty. Before he closed the door he saw Scott walking down the hallway, so he left the door open and went back to his laptop. 

Behind him, he could hear Scott close the door, check the locks, and shake off his jacket. 

“They want a full report.” Scott paused. “But they’re satisfied with what’s been delivered.”

“We didn’t stop her. We lost it.”

“No one died. That was our job.”

Scott sat on the edge of the bed. It had to be one of those memory foam mattresses, because it barely made a sound under his weight. 

Logan typed. He could feel Scott staring at him, for once not critiquing his lackluster keyboard skills. Scott said, “You’re still pissed.”

“We didn’t stop her. Their bullshit coin is worth more because of all the publicity, and that’s all they care about. Not that some kid is going to prison for carting around a made-up gun to an event for made-up money.”

Scott spoke softly. “You in his phone messages?” 

Logan grunted. He hadn’t had to search for long. “He was never hired to go after Guttemann. He was hired to threaten Ernie.”

“So, it was probably Raven behind it.”

Logan mashed some keys, waiting for the laptop screen to unfreeze. “Yup.”

“Some punk with a useless gun threatens Ernie at the Con, he keeps his hard drive to himself, she quietly lifts it after the event. It’s actually not a terrible plan.”

“Apart from the kid with the gun who they set up to be the fall guy. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Turns out he’s on a waiting list for a rehab clinic. His ex is pregnant.”

Scott exhaled, long and low. “How old?”

“He’s 20, she’s 18. Name’s Donna. Lives with her Ma in Stockton.” 

“There’s gonna be money from the fee, plus whatever you decide to charge for your ongoing advisory services. We’ll send some on to her.”

Logan swung around to look at him. Scott had leaned back onto his elbows, titling his head towards him. “All that stuff you said, about providing a full-service - what was it?”

Smirking, Scott parrotted himself, “‘A full-service-package for managing the situation.’”

“I don’t talk to my clients like that.”

“No shit.” Scott lay down on his back, his legs spread out so his feet just barely touched the floor. He was so long. Just to look him over took time, even as skinny as he was, no matter how many diner breakfasts the two of them ate or cold beers they drank as the sun went down. He seemed to burn so much energy just existing.

He was about to suggest they call room service and get a few beers in. Maybe a grilled cheese sandwich, Logan could murder one right now. But before he could impart this brilliant suggestion, Scott piped up again. “Are you upset because of Vince? You thought he was the real deal?”

“Fuck’s sake. I only met him yesterday.”

“You said to me that he seemed good at his job, which for you is practically singing someone’s praises - ”

“Eat shit.”

Scott sat up. He was on the verge of laughter. “It is bugging you! I mean, look at it like this, he was good at his job, and his job included snowing you.”

Logan was up and on top of Scott in a heartbeat. He gripped Scott’s wrists and pressed them back down into the mattress, straddling his hips, forcing him to lie back down. Scott kept on laughing. 

Grunting, Logan pushed his wrists down a little harder. “Fuck you, Slim. Used to be, you knew what a terrorist looked like.”

“When was that, old man, back when they had curly moustaches and held up stage coaches - ”

Pressing more of his weight onto Scott, Logan pushed his arms a little wider, straining the buttons of his shirt as it stretched over his chest. 

“My taste in team members sure sucks.”

“You’ve always been a pisspoor judge of character. Remember that car salesman in Minneapolis?”

Scott choked off the rest of the story as Logan scraped his teeth down his neck. He didn’t want to remember Minneapolis or the money that he’d lost on a bum Chrysler there. He did want to hear Scott make that same breathless noise again. And he wanted him to lose the shirt. 

Biting through the fabric into the skin just under Scott’s collarbone, Logan huffed and pulled until a shirt button popped. Scott swore, “You goddamned _animal_ , Logan - ”

Pushing away the edges of the shirt to get at his chest, Logan bit again, feeling all of Scott press up towards him as he hissed out. Working over the thin skin he rubbed his face down Scott’s breastbone, hearing his heartbeat thud against his cheek, the burn of his unshaven scruff pinking up the flesh. He still had Scott’s hands held tight down on the bed so Scott resorted to kicking as Logan went after a nipple. 

Sitting up a little to admire his work, Logan grunted, looking over the mess he’d made. Scott’s shirt was hanging on by a couple of buttons. He let go long enough to rip them open and push them both up the bed a little. Scott was making a lot of noise - not words, more shouts and exclamations - Logan idly wondered if a hotel this expensive had decent soundproofing. 

Crawling up to bury his knees under Scott’s armpits, he watched Scott gulp for breath as his bulk covered his chest. Logan lifted his thumb to the top of Scott’s face to lazily run his hand down, capturing his profile as his fingertips dragged over the crow’s lines and cheekbones, dipping a thumb over red lips and getting bitten sharply for it. He kept his thumb there, Scott growling against it, having regained air. 

Logan picked up one of Scott’s hands and pressed it to his belt buckle. “Get rid of it.”

Scott used his other hand to punch Logan in the chest. Logan’s thumb was still in his mouth as he said, “Fuck you.”

“Hurry up.” 

While sending a knee to Logan’s back, Scott’s hands pushed in around Logan’s waist, pulling his shirt away before moving to the buckle. Logan bucked forward a little and laughed when Scott punched his thigh in return and called him an asshole.

“You learn that language in the Boy Scouts?”

“...weigh a ton, feel like you’re made of concrete…”

Logan reached down behind him to grab at Scott’s balls. Squeezing through his jeans, he looked down at Scott squirming under him, picking at Logan’s belt buckle. 

“Feels like you’re the one made of stone, Slim.”

Scott had gotten the belt off, and he folded it in one hand to whip Logan one good one across the chest before throwing it beside the bed. 

Grasping Scott’s throat in his hand, Logan bent down over him. “Little shit. I should flip you over and use that on you.”

Scott bucked under him as Logan shoved his tongue in his mouth. It choked them both for a few seconds. Then Logan pulled back a little to bite at Scott’s chin, Scott following to seal their mouths together. Between their bodies Logan tugged at his zipper while Scott pulled Logan’s shirt up over his shoulders. 

“ _Ungh_ ,” Logan sat up on his knees long enough to pull his shirt off. Meanwhile Scott took advantage and got the rest of his zipper down, then pushing down on the waistband of Logan’s underwear to roll it down the back of his ass. His dick was still trapped in there, until Scott’s long fingers curved around to the front of his hips to untuck him. 

He could feel Scott’s breath graze over the tip of his cock. Threading his fingers through Scott’s hair, Logan pulled his head up. They kept eye contact as Scott’s smirk melted into an open mouth. Full lips spread in a perfect O, so perfect it pissed Logan off even more, and he resisted the impulse to push forward for a moment. 

Scott’s hands were hard on his hips urging him forward. Logan imagined the bruises he’d get there. How he’d feel them after a long drive the next day. His blood was screaming in his veins, and he rested his cockhead on the plump ridge of Scott’s lower lip. Scott’s head curled forward, his mouth instantly fastening around it and sucking so hard Logan yelped and pushed in more without thinking. 

Strong fingers were digging into the meat of Logan’s ass as he thrust into the hot tunnel of Scott’s mouth. His own heartbeat roared in his ears as he watched Scott at work, somehow avoiding choking, spit slick on his chin and eyes wet. He was making these harsh noises, yet they weren’t even as desperate as the sounds from Logan’s throat. His fingers curled harder to cup the base of Scott’s skull as he took the pace down a little, going deeper into Scott’s throat. 

The whole time Scott’s eyes stayed on his. Defiant, jubilant even, with unshed tears lining those long lashes. Logan pulled one hand away from his head to scrape blunt nails down Scott’s neck to his chest, drawing out an even deeper moan. 

Wrenching Scott’s head back, Logan pulled out from his mouth, getting just enough edge from his teeth. For a moment Scott looked up at him dazed, agape and wasted, and that look was the clincher; Logan came in thick ropes over the reddened lips and wet chin. It dripped down his neck to pool in the hollow of his neck, and Logan might’ve bent down to lap it up except that he got punched in the stomach first. 

“Fucker! It’s going to get in my hair, you sonuva -”

Logan was already crawling back to rest between Scott’s knees. “Calm down, princess, there’ll be tiny shampoo bottles in the bathroom.”

Letting out an exasperated sigh, Scott helped Logan unzip his jeans. He was muttering something when Logan nestled his mouth in a crease between his balls and his dick to suck another little marking, and the muttering turned into a string of _oh-oh_ s. 

Sometimes Scott clenched up when he was being blown, turning the long lines of his limbs into tight angles, his fingers and toes curling as his spine wrapped inwards, like some part of his brain was trying to protect him from showing his belly to a predator. But this time he sagged back into the mattress. Logan didn’t take his time, didn’t need to, but he could enjoy Scott’s smell, some tang of ocean salt lingering there, a clean note to him even in this part of his body. 

While Scott was keeping his hands to himself, one arm thrown over his eyes, the other hand gripping at the bedcover, just before he came his heels pressed into the small of Logan’s back. As if Logan needed encouragement not to pull his mouth away. He stayed sucking even as Scott went limp and began to shudder at the over-stimulation, pushing at Logan’s head to get him to stop. Logan didn’t relent until he absolutely needed to breathe again.

Afterwards, Logan pulled himself up to flop on the other side of the bed. He picked up the phone to order a grilled cheese sandwich from room service while Scott gathered up the remnants of his shirt from the bed to wipe his face off with. Dismayed, he looked down at his chest. 

“Can’t believe you. I’m meant to be on lifeguard duty at the school next week. I’m gonna have to wear a t-shirt, you ass.”

Tucking the phone receiver under his chin, Logan looked over admiringly at his work. Scott’s chest was reddened, marked over with bites and scratches. His left nipple had gotten a particularly rough time of it. There was a purple hickey on the right side of his chest, which Logan knew from experience would grow darker in the next few days, fading into a brown-green mark that would be stark against the copper of his suntanned skin. 

Scott was still bitching. “I told you, our department is compulsory report. That’s for any signs of violence or possible abuse. All I need, one over-protective grad student going to our advisors over this.”

“Show ‘em where the bad man touched you.”

Throwing the destroyed shirt at Logan, Scott leaned back into the bed. “Order me a sandwich, too. And some veggies on the side.”

“Damn hippie.”

Scott kicked him. “Don’t get any extra beer. We have a client meeting early, remember.”

Room service picked up just as Scott leveraged himself off the bed to head for the shower. Logan ordered the food, and some extra beer. Scott rolled his eyes and closed the bathroom door behind him.

Logan murmured, “There’s no ‘we’ in team.” 

It was a good line. He’d have to use it on Scott in the morning.

**Author's Note:**

> A billion bitcoin worth of thanks to [cygnaut](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cygnaut/pseuds/cygnaut) for beta duties at the speed of light; any errors are mine, including considerable liberties taken with crypto technology. Title from Wu Tang Clan's C.R.E.A.M.


End file.
